Over 90 percent of Canada's oil reserves are bitumen, the costly production of which nets only 4 percent to Canada's GDP. But oil represents 40 percent of the country's exports. So the urgency to develop and export the tar-sands oil has become a national priority.

This spill is just the latest from Plains Midstream Canada; the company had another massive 28,000-gallon oil spill only last year. And that's just one oil company. We can do better than this -- Canada, the U.S., and beyond. We can all do better than oil.

Critics of U.S. domestic energy policy are trying to maneuver the Keystone XL oil pipeline past the Oval Office, but in the long shadow of the Keystone XL pipeline project are a series of domestic oil pipelines that could make Keystone redundant by the time it goes into service in 2015.

The Koch brothers are doing whatever they can to avoid testifying in Congress, despite the fact that the Kochs informed the Canadian government of their "direct and substantial" interest in the Keystone XL pipeline.